Several Irish citizens have sought official help after being arrested and detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), according to the Irish Government.
It comes as Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the treatment of people in Ice facilities was a “concern,” and confirmed he will be raising concerns about the treatment of undocumented Irish people with the US president Donald Trump in Washington DC.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee confirmed a “small number” of less than a dozen Irish citizens have also sought help from Irish embassies, in situations similar to that of Seamus Culleton.
On Monday The Irish Times reported that Culleton, an Irishman living in the United States for more than 20 years, has been held by Ice since being arrested last September.
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Culleton, who has described his experience as “a torture”, has appealed to the Taoiseach to raise his case with Trump during the St Patrick’s Day visit to the White House next month.
While Culleton’s case was reported to the Department of Foreign Affairs late last year, Martin told journalists he had only been briefed about it on Monday. He said the Government was considering how it can talk to Trump’s administration about the case.
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In the Dáil on Tuesday, the Taoiseach said Seamus Culleton’s case “cannot be resolved in the public domain”.
He told Labour leader Ivana Bacik the Government will “do everything we can to help Seamus Culleton, but we have to do it in a way that can really help him” and “in a way that can be effective for him”.
“We can’t promise, because we don’t control American migration,” he said.
Bacik noted that Culleton got married last April and “has spent more than half his married life in detention”. She had spoken to his sister Caroline and heard about the “appalling conditions in which he is detained, 72 men packed into a single tent, filth everywhere, lack of sanitation, violent guards, alleged strangling, three men dead already, and conditions so brutal that detainees are gambling on who will be the next person to take their own life”.
She accused the Government of a “lack of urgency in dealing with the case of an Irish citizen who’s been detained in inhumane conditions for five months”.
Earlier on Tuesday, on his way to a Cabinet meeting, the Taoiseach said the Irish Government has been raising concerns about undocumented Irish in United States “long before president Trump came into office”.
“There is now a crackdown in America in terms of the migration law, which we are concerned about in terms of how it affects the Irish undocumented,” he said.
The Taoiseach said that being in the United States without legal status was “a very difficult and dangerous position to be in, because it can end at any time”.
“Every country has migration policies, but those Ice facilities are a concern.”
Martin added that securing long term security for undocumented Irish was “more with the Hill and Congress”, which he said had never been in a position to get agreement on migration law to protect Irish migrants. “That’s become a more negative scenario in the last 10 years, because of the way the migration debate has gone in the US.”
Martin confirmed he would raise the issue with Trump: “We’ll be raising it, we’ve been raising it consistently.”
Fianna Fáil TD John McGuinness told the Dáil that at the end of November 2025, Culleton “was coming to the last part of his green card interviews. And he couldn’t attend, obviously, because he was being detained”.
The Carlow-Kilkenny TD in whose constituency the wider Culleton family live, said financial difficulties were now emerging because he was not working.
The Taoiseach said the Government was conscious “this is in the middle of an application for status, and we don’t want to do anything that would undermine the securing of that status for Seamus Culleton”.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs and officials were meeting about the issue and “I have a further update when I leave here”, the Taoiseach added.
Earlier today, McEntee confirmed Culleton’s case had been brought to the attention of the Department of Foreign Affairs late last year. “We have been providing support and consular assistance to him, and we continue to provide that to him. I acknowledge it’s a really distressing situation for him, and we want to do everything that we can to support him,” she said.
[ Ice detention camp, where Irishman is held, under scrutiny for unexplained deathsOpens in new window ]
She confirmed her department was aware of other Irish citizens who have sought help after being detained by Ice.
McEntee said the number of cases was fewer than 12, and said she would “stress” that if anyone was in a similar scenario to Culleton, Irish embassies are able to support them.
Tánaiste Simon Harris said it was an “extremely stressful” time for Culleton’s family, and added Ireland will be using diplomatic channels to advocate for the Irishman between now and the Taoiseach’s White House visit in March.
“I take the point that’s made about what may or may not happen on the 17th of March, I would just make the point, it’s fair whack a time to go between now and the 17th of March,” he said.
